Modeling and Measuring Socio-Hydrological Dynamics Across Scales

How can we conceptualize hydrological systems as socio-ecological systems within which the rigorous study of feedbacks becomes possible?

In this workshop, we will 1) integrate our understanding of feedbacks between institutional processes, individual economic choices, and hydrological dynamics, 2) identify areas of potential progress in the empirical methods available to quantify feedbacks and make predictions, and 3) identify the most important types of missing social/institutional data in order to improve our understanding of the dynamics of socio-hydrological systems.

We bring together researchers working on socio-hydrological systems from many perspectives: hydrologists studying how hydrological regimes are modified by patterns of water use, economists studying how individuals use water under different environmental and institutional constraints, political scientists studying how water availability shapes conflicts and how institutions allocate water to resolve these conflicts, and modelers developing new statistical and computational approaches that can help us study complex systems.

Supported by the NSF Science of Science and Innovation Policy Program, the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program, the Santa Fe Institute, and the ASU/SFI Center for Biosocial Complexity